ARGENTINA | 24-02-2018 11:08

Argentines deliver a damning verdict on the nation's media outlets

Share this News

Only 37% believe the media covers local political issues fairly. | SHUTTERSTOCK

Argentines do not like
their media, it seems.

According to a recent
report, only 37 percent of Argentines
believe the media covers
local political issues fairly,
compared to 52 percent worldwide
and 77 percent in the
highest-rated country, Indonesia.
That’s lower than all but
three of 38 countries studied in
the survey.

The January report from the
Pew Research Center, a USbased
non-partisan polling and
demographic research organisation,
examined public attitudes
toward the media worldwide.
It showed that overall, approval
for the media across
many measures remained relatively
high, a boost for journalists,
editors and publishers in a
time where the term “fake
news” has come to the fore. But
Argentines and Latin Americans
in general, Pew found, had
less confidence and trust in
their journalists than people in
other nations surveyed.

“What’s interesting is how
low [Argentina] sits when it comes
to covering political issues
thoroughly,” said Katerina Eva
Matsa, associate director of
journalism research at Pew.
“Among the 38 countries we
saw, that’s on the low end.”

In one of the survey’s questions,
respondents were asked if
they believe their local media
outlets do a good job of reporting
the most important stories. In all
countries, some 73 percent said
the media did “well” or “somewhat
well,” but in Argentina
the figure slumped to 56 percent.
Queries about whether the
media reported the news accurately
(62 percent worldwide, 45
percent in Argentina) or reported
news about government leaders
and officials well (59 percent
globally, 38 percent for Argentines)
fared no better.

The report’s most notable overall
conclusion, according to Eva
Matsa, is how overwhelming the
desire is for unbiased news, but
that this demand from the global
public isn’t matched by their
evaluation of how media are performing.
This is no surprise for
Argentina, said Martín Becerra,
a media and politics researcher
at CONICET and a professor at
the universities of Quilmes and
Buenos Aires. In general, Argentina
“is not a country where the
public has a lot of confidence in
the media,” he explained to the
Times in an interview.

Argentine media outlets don’t
choose what to cover based on
the relevancy of the information
to the public, Becerra argued,
but on what’s the best decision
to take politically. “In reality the
media is very biased,” he said.
Another significant revelation
for local observers is how closely
linked support for the current
government in power and
feelings about the economy are
to approval of media. In Argentina
specifically, 47 percent of
those that support the Macri administration
are satisfied with
the news media, but among those
that distrust the government,
the number falls to 33 percent.
That gap is greater than in the
US, UK and Venezuela. Empirical
evidence, some might argue,
of the infamous “grieta.”

Much of Argentines’ lack of
confidence in the media’s transparency
and lack of bias depends
on a person’s political
leanings, Becerra continued.
“The vast majority of those who
oppose the government are critical
of the media,” he said.
“There’s a difference with the
countries I mentioned because
in Argentina the quality of political
journalism is hampered by
emotion.”

But Becerra also agrees that
other factors in an Argentine’s
daily life can impact their trust
in media. “The social and political
climate doesn’t offer much
opportunity to trust in journalistic
accuracy,” Becerra said. “An
Argentine is more sceptical than
a Canadian citizen, for example,
because the Canadian lives in a
more stable situation.”

Daniel Dessein, the president
of the Association of Journalistic
Entities in Argentina (ADEPA),
attributed much of this disillusionment
with the media to the
actions of recent populist governments
across the region and
specifically Kirchernism in Argentina.
“They try and break
away from traditional model,”
he said. “They try and start a
conversation around the media
and question the role of journalism.
They make it sound like
something secretive, that’s in
cahoots with other industries.”

Dessein compared the atmosphere
around the media in Argentina
to the current situation
in the United States, where President
Donald Trump has persistently
attacked media outlets
and used his personal Twitter
account to bypass traditional
communication channels.

“Sometimes these constant
battles can impact upon media
entities,” Dessien said. “But
journalism has come out of this
stronger so far. There’s been an
enhancement in how some people
value journalism.”

If Dessein’s analysis is correct,
that might help explain data
from the rest of Latin America,
the region most critical of its
news media overall. In addition
to Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela
and especially Chile struggle
with confidence in media.

Though Venezuela’s media
outlets scored higher than Argentina
in all four categories of
media approval, Dessein warned
that a direct comparison
was unfair because of the differing
political systems. The press
in Venezuela have faced numerous
obstacles too in recent
years, nor are they covering a
well-functioning state.

Becerra said Argentina and
Chile have very different media
and political landscapes. For
example, Argentina returned to
democracy sooner and Chile is
more conservative. Yet despite
the differences, the two neighbours
scored similarly on things
like economic development
and educational attainment.

“In this sense it’s possible
Chile and Argentina offer a similar
situation. In both countries
there’s a huge concentration
of media companies.
They’re media entities that are
very biased and partisan,” he
argued.

This is a different state of
affairs, for example, than in
Brazil or Mexico, where standard
of living measures are
lower. Brazil has strong media
approval rates for the region,
which Dessein suggests may
have been helped by the role
journalists played in the massive
corruption scandals that have
ravaged nearly every aspect
of Brazilian life.

But Argentina does keep pace
with Brazil in another category:
digital news engagement.
Brazil, with the secondmost
Instagram, third-most
Facebook and sixth-most Twitter
users in the world, is known
for its social media presence.
But over half (51 percent) of
Argentines get news from social
media nowadays, 10 points
more than Brazil. Plus, 39 percent
visit social media sites
multiple times a day, the fourth-highest
rate of countries surveyed.
Expanding to the Internet
in general, 47 percent of
Argentines get their news online,
just one point behind Brazil
and five points above the global
median.

Both Becerra and Dessein
worry about the effect this is
having on media organisations.
Beyond reducing revenue sources,
they see social media as
exacerbating the ideological
gap and making it more difficult
to discern trusted sources
from unreliable ones or even
outright fake news.

It’s unclear exactly how Argentines
might think under a
different administration, or in
a different economic moment
— this is the first time Pew has
asked such questions globally.
But for Dessein, the Macri administration
is a sea change.
During Kirchnerism, “the government
attacked in a systematic
manner,” and was constantly
motivating its followers
in a battle against the media.
But now with Macri, “this is an
agenda of normalisation,” he
argued.